Windows client dies at random

[Mark Jackson]

I'm suffering intermittant failures of my VNC viewer, which may be
associated with ZoneAlarm Pro.

I am connecting from a Windows XP Home Edition (SP 1) machine to a
Sparc Solaris 8 box.  Connection works fine and I can work in my
OpenWindows desktop environment - for an indeterminant period varying
from under a minute to when I'm done and shut down the client manually,
sometimes well over an hour.  When the client dies it just disappears,
without warning.  Almost always it leaves a notification box with the
helpful diagnostic "Connection closed"; perhaps 10% of the time there's
no notification box at all, and once or twice I have seen a somewhat
more technical message (which escapes me at the moment).  In the VNC
server log on the Unix box it just says "Client <IP address> gone,"
followed by session statistics.

Other details:  server is Xvnc version 3.3.3.  Client is TightVNC
viewer version 1.2.6 - but I've tested the "real" VNC version
(approximately) contemporaneous with the server and have the same
failures.  I am 99% certain that I did not see this problem during the
two weeks or so I was running this system before installing ZoneAlarm
Pro; I have fiddled with Zonealarm's settings without affecting this
behavior (specific suggestions welcome).  The other details of the
setup are:  Linksys router with firewall, cable modem (Roadrunner),
Contivity VPN client (the Solaris box is behind a corporate firewall).
A Windows 98 system connected to the same cable modem and running the
same software (but no ZoneAlarm) has no such problems.

Diagnostic questions or suggestions, before I deinstall ZoneAlarm?

-- 
Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson
	It is not easy, these days, to go beyond the bounds of taste.
					- Paul Goldberger